"Good Bye" for now & a Teaser

Well, this is it...the end of the road...at least for a few days.

Today it took 6 hours for my PC to boot-up and come on. It came on for a little bit this morning (about an hour) but then shut it's self off. Around 2ish I turned the poor thing on and left it alone. As I said, 6 hours later he finally came to life. So I took the opportunity to contact Hewlett-Packard and have them run an on-line diagnostic. I also decided to use this time to make this last post.

Anyway, the HP tech determined that there was a hardware problem and was most likely the motherboard. Before contacting HP directly I talked to the local, authorized repair company and they said it would cost $60 to have a diagnostic ran. I then found a brand new motherboard (just in case) for under $175 - normally around $300.

Get this...the HP tech has arranged for my PC to be shipped, priority, to the factory for a rebuild - ALL FOR FREE!!!

Yes...you heard that right....they will provide a shipping container, the shipping cost to them and back AND all the parts and labor for FREE!!!

I always knew I liked HP for a reason.

So, within 1 to 2 days I will receive the shipping container and send it off. They will then have it back to me within 7 business days after they receive it.

Thanks Ethan for helping out on this!

The only thing I have to do is prep it to go - back-up all files and remove anything, like pics and documents, I don't want erased. I'm a little leery of this because I know you can not completely remove info off of a PC unless you use certain software. So I'm skittish of them digging up my personnel and financial stuff. But then again, if someone wanted it that bad they would find a way to get it.

So, in about two weeks I will have a completely rebuilt PC as if it’s brand new.

I was really shocked when I started downloading files, pics, &c. I had no idea I had that much on it! So far I have filled two large zip drives with photos and still have a third more to go.

I will have access to the blog and e-mail via SWMBO's company laptop but they frown on it being used for personal stuff. So I will probably not post anything else until my PC comes home - so be watching for lots of pics and such!

Speaking of which, here are some 'teasers' of how things are moving along in the kitchen.



Remember those nasty green walls?

GONE!

The skim coat system I'm going with is working well. The only screw-ups are due to me.

If you look real close you can see some lines on the walls. Those are the spots where I screwed up. They will be easy to fix and once the second coat is on the imperfections of the wall should be less noticeable.

Love the newspaper?

The plaster gets messy so I put the paper up to help protect the woodwork. What you are seeing here is the tattered remains after a psychotic cat had its way with it.

Here's the main wall, the one with all the patches. It isn't completely dry so you can still see some of the patches. Again, there are some screw-ups.

If you are going to be doing any skim coating you really need to get the Magic Trowel.

The first time SWMBO saw the results she said “WOW!” and I know she was skeptical of the tool.

Like I said before - it's messy.

All of those little white spots are splats of mud as I applied it.

If you look really hard you will see some of the bigger splats on the paper.

Thought I would throw in a couple shots of the 'prep work' involved.

The paper is primarily there to protect the wood from the plaster adhesive applied before the mud is put on. I’ll write more on that later.

I wonder how many people think we have put curtains up? The paper looks like cafe curtains from the road.


Anyway, I'll leave you all for now. I got this message out without the PC crashing on me so I'd better quit while I'm ahead.

Till next time....

Cheers!
Larry ~